Small black holes could have left tunnels inside Earth’s rocks

A couple of imaginative cosmologists have great news for everyone: if a primordial black hole passes through your body, you probably won’t die.

This unexpected quiet is part of their broader hypothesis about where scientists might find primordial black holes (PBHs) — ancient, tiny, high-density theoretical black holes. in a study published in the December issue of Physics of the dark universe and available online since September, cosmologists suggest that evidence of PBH could be present inside hollow celestial bodies, as well as in objects here on Earth.

“We have to think outside the box because what has been done before to find primordial black holes has not worked,” Dejan Stojkovic of the University at Buffalo, who co-wrote the study, said in a university lecture. statement.

“Family” black holes, if you can call them that, typically form from dying stars that collapse inward. Primordial black holes, on the other hand, could have formed shortly after the Big Bang, when areas of dense space also collapsed inward, before stars even existed; primordial part.

Scientists have theorized about the existence of PBH for decades, but have never actually observed one. According to the study, some scholars even suggest that PBHs could be dark matter itself (the mysterious substance that makes up 85% of the mass of the universe). “Small primordial black holes (PBHs) are perhaps the most interesting and intriguing relics of the early universe,” the researchers wrote in the study.

Stojkovic and his colleague calculated that if a very fast PBH with a mass of 2.2 x 10^19 pounds (i.e. 22 followed by 18 zeros) passed through a solid object, it would leave a tunnel 0.1 microns thick. It’s small, but still visible with powerful microscopes, meaning we could investigate objects around us for evidence of its existence.

According to cosmologists, older objects are more likely to host a PBH tunnel. The “highest probabilities” are still pretty slim (they calculated that the probability of a PBH passing through a billion-year-old rock was 0.000001 percent), but not zero.

“The chances of finding these signatures are small, but searching for them would not require many resources and the potential reward, the first evidence of a primordial black hole, would be immense,” Stojkovic explained in the statement.

This brings us back to the chances of a PBH passing through your body, which are even lower than those of a billion-year-old rock. However, even if it did happen, the researchers are confident that it would not sustain major injuries, as human tissue has low tension, meaning the PBH would likely pass through without tearing.

“If a projectile moves through a medium faster than the speed of sound, the molecular structure of the medium does not have time to respond,” Stojkovic said. “If you throw a rock through a window, it is likely to break. Shoot a window with a gun, you’ll probably just leave a hole.” A PBH’s speed would also prevent it from releasing much of its kinetic energy within its body.

Stojkovic and his colleague, De-Chang Dai of National Dong Hwa University and Case Western Reserve University, also suggest looking for evidence of PBH in celestial bodies with surprisingly low masses. They propose that if a PBH passes through a body such as a planet, a moon or an asteroid with a liquid core, it could become trapped inside and suck out its center, hollowing it out until an external impact dislodges it.

“If the object has a liquid central core, then a captured PBH can absorb the liquid core, the density of which is greater than the density of the outer solid shell,” explained Stojkovic. On the other hand, celestial bodies without a liquid core would have microtunnels similar to those of solid objects on Earth.

As a consequence, the duo suggests that astronomers look for celestial bodies with densities (that can be calculated from their orbit) significantly lower than expected. They would also have to be smaller than a tenth of the Earth’s radius, since anything larger would collapse in on itself.

Although these parameters, in Stojkovic’s own words, are “out of the ordinary,” the researchers emphasize that such theoretical studies are necessary. “The smartest people on the planet have been working on these problems for 80 years and they still haven’t solved them,” he said. “We do not need a simple extension of existing models. “We probably need a whole new framework.”

While the average person won’t be participating in the new search for primordial black holes, this is your signal to alert the scientific community if something unexpected passes through your body.